BEAT THE COUCH · THE ARCHIVE · THE COVID CRASH
THE WINDOW: FEB 19, 2020 TO JAN 28, 2022 · 504 TRADING DAYS
February 19, 2020 was the top. Five weeks later the market was down by a third. The couch bought the top and still ended with $13,435. 21.8% of 426 players beat it.
THE COUCH'S $10,000, DAY BY DAY, REAL DAILY DATA
February 19, 2020. A record high. A virus nobody is worried about yet. The couch buys the exact top.
In five weeks the market falls 33%, the fastest crash of that size on record. In March it moves by 9% or more in a single day several times, in both directions. Then on March 23 the Fed says it will buy almost anything, and the bottom is in. Nobody believed it. The economy was shut.
The couch held through the whole thing and ended its two years with $13,435, +34.4%. Cash earned +0.5%.
Player figures cover every game whose window started in 2020, not only the exact hand above, and come from the run export of October 31, 2026. A win counts as SKILL only if it beats 90% of 1,000 monkeys replaying the same window with the same trade count and the same time in the market. Across the thirty windows in this archive players beat the couch 39.2% of the time, because these are the famous years. Across the whole ledger the couch wins 62% of 120,800 games.
21.8% of 426 players beat the couch, even with the fastest crash in history sitting right at the start of the window. The median player finished -8.4% against it. Selling in March 2020 was easy. Buying back was the hard part, and most players never found a moment that felt safe enough before the market had already recovered.
Play this exact windowfree, no signup, about two minutes. Same two years, same data, no hindsight.Very fast. A couch that bought at the February 19, 2020 top fell 33% by March 23, then recovered to end its two-year window with $13,435 of $10,000.
In the game, players starting in 2020 beat a buy-and-hold couch only 21.8% of the time, despite knowing a crash was possible.
Method: real S&P 500 daily total returns, dividends included, calibrated to Damodaran's annual series; cash earns 3-month T-bills. The same data the game deals. See the evidence page for sources, and the full ledger for the whole ledger.
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Not financial advice. The couch is not licensed for anything.